Wednesday, May 13, 2015

I found this class to be the most valuable for me in terms of practicing my skills. The class was said to be a lot about giving us the tools and doing brief overviews. I had already had some experiences with multimedia and the things we learned, so I enjoyed delving into the tools more in depth and filling in some of the gaps I had. Like with Timeline, I didn't know you could embed things like Tweets. Or with Storify, I practiced creating more cohesive storylines with multiple elements.

The thing I was most proud of was my documentary video. It was a lot of hard work but I learned a lot about filming and editing. And it's really awesome to have a work sample of an 8 minute high quality documentary. It was also exciting to win a Williams Prize for my videos. It was probably the most new thing I learned in this class and therefore the largest area where I strengthened my skills and feel like I made a large improvement.

Another favorite thing that I produced was my final multimedia package. More than anything, it showed me that any and every article had the potential to be more than just writing. Every article can be dressed up and made more interactive and interesting with the addition of some multimedia elements. It doesn't have to be a once a semester thing – it can be adding bits here and there as well as taking time to create more polished packages.

I liked the curation project a lot, but I just don't know if I picked the best topic. It was something I was really passionate about and knew a lot about, but I found it hard to break into in terms of being an expert. It was a rather exclusive community where people didn't really care what others had to say. Those with connections have the monopoly on information and breaking news in the industry. Tweeting the links helped establish myself with some smaller people who would retweet my blog posts and my information, but I didn't see a way to further advance myself when there was a limited amount of stuff for me to comment on. And I didn't really feel like my opinions would matter or make an impact.

I had a few blog posts get a lot of posts after putting them on Reddit and good timing of writing them. But a time when I tried to create my own new content by pulling facts I found on a Reddit thread commented by a band member, he saw it and Tweeted at me that it was weird. So that was kind of a failure.

I think my favorite part of the curation project was the online community, which I know wasn't popular for others. I really liked being on Reddit. It felt less exclusive than Twitter and was a place where I could go to learn as well as discuss the topic that I was so passionate about – with other people who were just as passionate as me. I didn't have to try to connect with the people out there on Twitter, because on Reddit they're all already in the same place. It informed the other two parts of my curation project – material to blog about and providing me links to tweet. I still find myself checking it and using it to keep updated on the music I like.

This class, while one of the toughest I've taken at Lehigh, has taught me so many practical skills for my career in both marketing and journalism. J230 offers a ton of information about digital journalism and media, and gave me a lot of knowledge about how to position myself as a journalist. One of the most valuable things I took away from the class was learning how to connect with an audience or community through social media.

While some of the class was not completely new information, I felt like we had an opportunity to fine tune our skills and learn what we are good at. I am not a huge fan of videography, but I feel like I learned a lot about to to quickly film and edit a quality video, which will be beneficial in my future career. I really enjoyed learning about data visualization and the role it plays in journalism, since I know that despite the fact that I love words and reading, most people would rather take in information in a visually stimulating way.

The curation project, while it really took a lot of time and commitment (and remembering to do it) was by far my favorite part of the class. Even when it took me a long time to think of something to post on my blog, I loved looking at my archives as the months went on and seeing how I'd made progress. It was also really rewarding to watch my Twitter following increase, even if I still pale in followers to some people. Most of the people who I interacted with on social media really related to my curation topic, so it wasn't completely random.

I had a lot of great learning experiences with the curation project. I was trolled, I fed the trolls, I tried to backtrack from feeding the trolls, etc. I also learned so much about my topic that it is something I would consider as a potential career track for the future. I really feel like having to produce content so frequently will help me as I start my internship this month and have to be constantly writing blog posts, white papers and other marketing collateral.

The one part of the curation project that I have to critique is the community involvement aspect. I felt like a lot of my community involvement came from the followers I was gaining and interacting with on Twitter, and I didn't make as much of a connection in an online community group like on Reddit or Facebook. Maybe it was because the topic of my project was about music and so the Reddit pages were more geared toward just posting songs and videos, but I felt like I was able to interact more just from my daily tweets and weekly blog posts.

The overall experience of this class, now that I am done, was positive. It was a ton of information to take in and I was definitely stressed throughout the majority of the semester, but it was manageable and worth all of the hard work. I know the department is considering breaking the class into two parts, and I support that, because I feel like there are some parts of the course that would be even more effective if we could spent a little bit more time on them.

Tuesday, May 12, 2015

This
was definitely the most valuable class I’ve taken at Lehigh so far in terms of
my future career goals in the digital magazine industry. The amount of work in
this class was not underestimated and I truly believe that it was a survival
class, but I learned some really valuable things that I hope to apply this
summer as a web intern at New York Magazine. Prior to this course, I was just
getting comfortable with regularly tweeting and “being involved in the
conversation” on social media. I quickly learned from my web internship at
Cosmopolitan.com last fall that using twitter is crucial and employers for that
presence in the web industry. I like practicing live tweeting, blogging, and
slowly creating my own website with all of my blog posts. One of my goals for
myself going into the semester was to actually start my own blog and to
practice pitching and writing news articles using the same techniques that we
had used as interns for a website. I’m really glad that I had the opportunity
to do the curation assignment in this class and wrote posts every week. Through
this assignment I also got a better feel for my voice as a writer. When you
write articles on the web, everything has to be succinct and catch the
audience’s attention. I noticed that last fall I didn’t have much practice with
blogging and I believe this has helped me sharpen my editorial skills that are
used in the web industry.

Another
really valuable skill that I picked up in this class was interviewing people
whether they were scheduled or impromptu interviews like the ones we did for
the scavenger hunt. It’s great to get comfortable grabbing random strangers and
getting them to want to talk to you about a subject. This can be difficult
obviously because everyone is going about their own schedules, but it’s also
necessary to be able to get that time from them and to be approachable.

I
also really enjoyed becoming familiar with FinalCut this semester, I think that
storytelling through videos is an important skill, and because I’m tedious in
nature, I enjoyed putting the story timelines together and creating the
documentary and shorter videos. Although, I think my strength is more editorial
than it is video production. Also I was really amazed by how big Periscope has
become, and I’m glad we had the opportunity to use it before it blew up on
social media and before every company fell into the Periscope hole.

Although
I touched a little bit on my curation assignment already, I really enjoyed all
three aspects of it. At first tweeting out links twice a day seemed like a daunting
task for someone who was just getting used to tweeting once every other day,
however, by the end of the semester it came natural and I was constantly on the
look out for cool fitness articles on twitter without even really noticing that
I was doing it. I also thought that becoming involved in fitness.com’s Facebook
world was interesting because I used to steer clear from commenting on pages in
the past. It’s funny because I always noticed that the Facebook reactions were
much more harsh than the twitter ones and people would go off on rants on some
of the fitness.com posts. I remember this was the case with Cosmopolitan’s Facebook
page as well and people on the web are always quick to notice flaws or glitches
with the articles.

Monday, May 11, 2015

When I talked to students that had taken this class before, the one thing they told me was that this was going to be one of the most demanding journalism classes in terms of workload and deadlines but would also be the most beneficial and most rewarding when completed. They were right. Although there were many projects throughout the semester, as well as the curation assignment, I realized that I probably learned the most from this class in comparison to any other journalism class so far. Learning about multimedia sites like Timeline, Piktochart, Soundcloud, etc. definitely will help me with my career. I don't know how many journalism students from other schools can say they got to use Google Glass and create video projects with the device. I think that was one of my favorite parts of the class- learning how to use Google Glass, because in reality I probably would never have gotten to experience Glass if I didn't take this class.

Although I am not 100 percent of what type of journalism career I will pursue, I do enjoy magazine writing and social media. I think learning how to code is really important and although Code Academy took me over 8 hours to complete, it was definitely worth it. Many business and engineering students learn to code at Lehigh, so the fact that we journalism students also got to learn was really exciting. I think the video editing and projects were really important as well because it allowed me to step out of my comfort zone. I had to talk to people I never met and film them, and although it was a bit uncomfortable at first, I learned a lot. Recording them and asking them questions actually helped me with my Journalism 298 class (writing for the media II). Between that class and this one I definitely learned a lot in terms of interviewing and deadlines.

I think one of the hardest parts of this class, at least for me, was the curation assignment. The actual assignment itself, tweeting, blogging, participating in an online community, wasn't the hard part, but doing all three each week at certain times was difficult. This was definitely one of the most demanding parts of the class, and although I didn't start out the assignment too great, I think I learned how to handle the tweeting twice a day, blogging twice a week and writing in the Reddit community. There were times when I would be getting ready for bed and think "shoot, did I tweet twice today?" After experiencing this I realized that Tweet Deck and setting times for tweets to go out was the move. This made things a lot easier because I could set a tweet to be sent out two days from when I created it, which was nice.

The curation assignment was definitely a learning experience. My tweets weren't great at first, but I learned and ended up finally catching on, on how to make a newsworthy tweet, I even got some publicity from people I've never met. I ended up gaining followers and from big company's like the verified McDonald's twitter account. They actually retweeted and responded to my tweets a number of times which I thought was pretty cool. I do wish my blog got a little bit more publicity or views, but I am happy that I was able to create a professional website. In terms of the online community, that was probably my least favorite. Although there were some interesting posts from people and although I got responses on my posts, my subreddit community had millions of people participating, so it was kind of tricky to have many people view my posts and comment or share them. Overall, the curation assignment was an interesting experience, and I can see why the assignment is included in the syllabus.

Although stressful at times, I thought this was a really interesting and important class. I learned a lot about multimedia storytelling and I am really happy I took this class. I would definitely recommend other journalism students to take Jour 230.... but maybe not this class and Jour 298 in the same semester!!

Overall I really enjoy Google Glass. I think it's a really neat device and I'm happy I got to experience it. I think my favorite project I did with Glass was the process video. I had a lot of fun when doing the assignment, however, it did get frustrating at times to teach my sister how to use the device. I think that was the hardest part of using Glass- teaching others who were not familiar with the device how to use Glass. Although some people understood how to use it after a couple minutes, others' just couldn't get the hang of it.

I think it terms of journalism, it may be difficult to use Glass, not because the device is difficult to use necessarily, but because of its presence. Say a person was recording news or a breaking story off of Glass, the device itself is a bit distracting and it's difficult to get the right shot of a person when you're filming because the screen is so small. I think it could be used if a journalist is working on a documentary or a feature story. Otherwise, I am not sure how Google Glass would fit into a journalism career.

I think Google Glass could be a really awesome device for journalism, but would need a few changes. For example, the appearance itself. While it's big on the head, the screen is very small. I would rather carry around a video camera than wear Google Glass on my head when telling or recording a story to be honest. Although it's easy to transfer photos and recorded clips to a computer (which is an advantage of Glass) I think most people have a problem with the way Google Glass looks when on and aren't willing to wear it in public. At least, that's what people told me when I asked them what they did and didn't like about Glass.

I think Glass is neat because it combines video recording, photo taking and sharing all in one. We see this with almost all Apple products including Iphones, Ipads, etc. What's different about Glass is that it's a hands-free device. Besides swiping and tapping a couple times, you really don't need your hands, which is nice. This means you can record while using your hands to write down notes or whatnot, which is important in terms of journalism. I think Glass will make a comeback in the future, but the biggest concern is just the way it looks and the small screen. If these two things are fixed I believe many people will start looking to buy Glass, because it really is cool technology.

This class has been so helpful in making me see that I really like doing multimedia work. I might not love the "social" part of it as much, but I've come to realize that I really like filming and editing video, and other visual things - like photography. So I guess I intend to keep that going potentially as part of my work for The Brown and White.
Besides that, learning basic coding, and all those other multimedia tools (like Timeline JS, Piktochart, Story Map JS, etc.) will help me think of a story as a package as opposed to just the written word and that can enhance a story to make it better.
I really liked all the work we did on our websites, because it gave me something to show during my internship search and it seemed to really impress people. The class also helped me create great multimedia work for my portfolio. That being said, the class was a little bit tough at times since there were so many things going on at the same time. All the projects, although helpful for creating that multimedia portfolio and improving my multimedia skills, were so jumbled up because of the passing around of google glass that it was hard to keep track what was due when.
It was good to have a constant that was the curation project. I'd say that my least favorite part about it was the community aspect of it. I don't know if I just chose the wrong community or I just didn't get it - since the book community can be so broad - but I just felt lost in it and not at all invested in the discussions. Sometimes it would be interesting, but most of the time they discussed things I didn't care for.
I loved blogging and reading articles on my topic to tweet them out. I had never been super in-the-know with all the book news, and it was nice to always be on the loop with what was going on. My friend from work, who also loves books, noticed I tweeted a lot about it and would ask me for book news of the day. I never had an experience like Austin were people on twitter considered me an expert, but I liked having the knowledge for myself.
For the blogging aspect I had to get a little creative, since I didn't want to review books. I usually gave my opinion on the kind of stuff I saw in the news I was reading or just general book-related topics. Sometimes I talked about book news. I liked doing this and I'm going to try to keep it going this summer and beyond.

Working with Google Glass for the first time this semester
was a really interesting process, especially after hearing so much hype about
it. The very first time I had a day with Glass, I was overwhelmed by the new
technology, and not being familiar with how to use it. Once I spent some time
reading the directions on connecting it to Wifi and how to use the device, it
was pretty cool. I loved walking around practicing taking pictures, checking
out the different features like Google search, and everyone I passed by was
really fascinated by it. Although, from the first time I used it I did noticed
that I couldn’t see the screen clearly unless I closed or squinted one eye. So
when I was taking pictures or recording a video it took a lot of focus because
the screen was so small and unclear. I feel like I was able to get a grasp of
its features on my first day with Glass and the learning curb wasn’t all that
difficult but it did take some practice and getting used to. However throughout
my experience with Glass, I noticed that there were a lot of features that
could be improved upon and it wasn’t as high tech as one would expect. My
subjects who I taught how to use the Glass said that same thing, and they were
actually disappointed that its picture quality wasn’t great, the camera was
slow, and that the voice command was as useful as Siri is half the time. In
other words, the Glass seems cool in its concept of wearing a camera on your
face, but it is also lacking the sleek, high tech features that its name holds.
In order to have a technology that will sell like the Apple Watch, these
features need to be improved and the concept alone isn’t enough.

I’m not sure if I’ll be able to use the Glass in my future
journalism career because I’m interested in pursuing the magazine editorial industry.
However, I know that Periscope has been huge among magazines since the app came
out, so if the Glass’s features improve, I’m sure it would be something that
companies are interested in using for live reporting on the streets or capturing
first person images that couldn’t have been caught with an iPhone. For example,
if they’re testing out a product that involves a lot of visuals and if best
seen from a first person perspective, this could a unique way to film. Glass is
hands free so there are a lot of possibilities for what it could do in stories
that require action.

I actually thought my videos turned out pretty well. For the topics that I chose, I thought the first-person aspect for the process video was cool. It was sort of boring, but the person that was wearing it did a good job. For the Glassumentary, I think the environmental sound aspect was really awesome. Having someone singing and wearing Glass was really cool and gives the viewer an inside look into the process of being in an a cappella group.

I like Glass. It gets annoying and hurts your temples sometimes, and people look at you weird when wearing it, but it is a useful tool for capturing video from different perspectives and gives more of an "inside look" for some things you would otherwise not be able to see just from a traditional camera.

Kelsey:
I definitely think that this was a valuable class experience. I learned so much this semester, and especially in areas that I normally struggle with. Despite the fact that both my parents work with computers, I usually am very slow and hesitant to figure out how to use new technology and applications. Even though this course isn’t a requirement for journalism majors, I decided to take it to challenge myself and get over my timidity in reference to technology.
All of the skills we learned this semester-- coding, filming and editing videos, maintaining a social media presence, and being knowledgeable about other forms of data visualization—are so valuable to journalists, so I think that these are definitely capabilities that I will use in my future career.
I also think that the practice of feeling uncomfortable, getting over it, and then feeling confident just diving in is also incredibly invaluable. When we had the twitter scavenger hunt, I felt kind of nervous going up to random faculty and students with my phone, because in the past, I’ve always interviewed people who I’d arranged to meet with ahead of time. Stopping people to interview them on the street is a side of journalism I had not yet experienced, but that’s definitely a part of journalism, and I need to get used to that feeling of never knowing how someone is going to react to my inquiries.
Curation blog: I actually had a funny encounter the other day with my blog! I was talking with a friend, and he asked me randomly if I have a blog. I said yes, and we actually started discussing one of my posts. I was so shocked, because I sometimes forget that people actually read it, and it was such a pleasantly surprising experience to find out that someone had read it and was interested in what I had to say. That’s something that I need to keep in mind, because to me, it’s felt more like a public diary of my thoughts on a particular subject, but I really need to keep in mind the public aspect of it.
Curation twitter: I was surprised, but it was a lot easier to find interesting things to tweet about as the semester went on. I had expected that I might run out of things to say or that the articles would get repetitive. But, contrary to my expectations, I found that once I knew my subject area better, I could sift through and find the articles that appealed to me the most in a much more time-efficient manner. In the beginning of the semester, it would take me hours to find articles or events that I wanted to tweet about. By the end of the semester, I was able to navigate the different sites a lot easier, and I feel a lot more knowledgeable and in tune with what each of them are saying.
Curation online community: I feel like I’ve learned a lot from my online community. Like I said in one of the past check-ins, I find out a lot of international feminist news through reddit, since a lot of the users are from all over the world. It’s interesting to see how different members react to posts. I absolutely love reading the discussions, because everyone has such a unique point. Even though a lot of the members identify as feminists, they do not always agree, so I think that underlines my point that feminism is an umbrella term that embodies so many different points of view.

While
this class has been a lot of hard work, I can certainly say that it has
improved my multimedia skills greatly. I think my work with editing and
producing videos has improved the most over the span of this class. After J24,
I still didn’t think my video editing and production skills were up to par, but
after all the videos we made in this class, I can definitely say that I’m much
more confident about the whole process.

In
addition, I have learned how to use tons of different tools that I’ve already
begun using in my journalism work outside of the class. While I already knew
some of the skills such as live-tweeting and creating infographics with
Piktochart, I learned different perspectives on them and could refine my
skills. I feel that the work I did for my final multimedia project was not only
the best article I’ve ever written in college, but the best multimedia package,
and I’m excited to put that on my work samples page on my website.

I
admit that I didn’t excel at everything we did in this class, but I took these
struggles/failures and used them as learning experiences instead of just seeing
it as a negative. The scavenger hunt assignment was probably what I struggled
with the most, so maybe I’m not fit to be the type of person who goes up to
random people on the street for interviews. No matter what, that’s a difficult
and often awkward thing to do. I also struggled with some of the video
production, but I felt like I improved greatly on that after each assignment.

I
think where I excelled the most was in the curation assignment portion of the
class, which is also the part I enjoyed the most. Blogging and using Twitter
were already things I loved to do, but putting them in the perspective of the
class and learning how to create a brand was something that I didn’t quite
understand until I began to do this assignment for a while. For my topic in
particular, I wanted to make people think of the Eagles when they saw me on
Twitter, because that’s not only my topic for the curation assignment, but also
something I’m regularly passionate about and hope to continue to write about.
As I mentioned in class, it’s the best feeling in the world when someone comes
to you with a question about a topic because they feel like you would best know
how to answer it and they want to hear your opinion.

My
follower base, while already large, continued to grow as a result of this
project. After starting the semester with just under 1,000 Twitter followers,
and as of now I have just over 1,300. I can’t wait to continue to expand this
follower count while also learning how to engage with my target audience more
to gain an even better rapport.

As
a result of this assignment, I have come to some very interesting conclusions
about how Eagles Twitter works. This may or may not be accurate for other
groups of people on Twitter, but what I have found is very intriguing and would
be interested to write something longer about it. I’ve come to figure out
generally what types of tweets are going to get the best interaction (mentions,
favorites and retweets), and have often found myself rewording my own tweets
before I send them to try to garner a better response. In the end, I want to be
viewed as one of the so-called “experts” on the Eagles, of which there are
currently two levels. The first level is the paid beat writers, who all have
thousands of followers and obviously get the most interaction. The second level
is the Eagles bloggers, many of which have formed a group in which they often
interact with each other, but not quite as much as other people. They are seen
as the “elite” in terms of knowledge among fans, and unless you’re in that
group, it’s hard to be recognized as much as a knowledgeable and trustworthy
fan due to the many ignorant people in the fan base. Once you’re in that group
though, it’s very easy to receive positive responses to most of your tweets
though because you’re already seen as a reputable opinion.

The
pre-requisite for that seems to be twofold: 1) writing for an Eagles-centered
blog, which you mention in your bio (and likely have a link to the website) and
2) more followers than people you’re following. For the latter, I think that
more people are willing to follow you if you have a positive ratio, and they’re
also more likely to interact with you and inquire your opinion on a topic. For
example, if I look at an account that follows 1,500 people and has 700
followers, I might be less inclined to seek out their opinion as opposed to
someone who follows 200 people and has 700 followers. I’m not sure whether they
get a positive ratio due to the fact that they’re already very knowledgeable or
if they’re more able to get their opinion out just by having that good ratio. I
will definitely continue to follow this though, and my ultimate goal is to be
included in that “elite” group of Eagles bloggers who people come to for
information.

Saturday, May 9, 2015

The celebrated
Earth Week with a variety of environmentally conscious activities to reinforce
the idea of sustainability on our campus. The week began on Friday April 17
with an outdoor concert on the UC Front Lawn featuring environmental activist
and singer songwriter, Penn Johnson. He along with his band sang songs that
included educational lyrics about the environmental impacts of fracking. The
week continued with activities such as a “rake and bake” with the CLIP Garden
Club which presented opportunity to plant on Lehigh’s soil, screenings of
environmentally educating movies, lectures on how to eat more “green,” and sustainability
workshops working on improving Lehigh’s future sustainability efforts. This
year’s annual Earth Day fair also took place in Lamberton Hall due to this
year’s inclement weather. The fair included booths organized by a variety of
students and faculty offering environmental initiative facts, free giveaways
and prizes, opportunities to plant personal pots, and many more environmentally
friendly activities. Students that attended the Earth Day fair enjoyed learning
about each group’s initiative while circling the booths.

Kristiana Barr ‘16,
Green Action and Eco-Reps member took part in organizing this year’s earth week
activities and recalls one in particular where students gathered on the STEPS
lawn and made their own trail mix in a mason jar. Barr notes, “We’re trying to
develop a campus that will be here for another 150 years.” Her involvement in
sustainability groups on campus came naturally as an Environmental Studies
major, and she feels that it’s an important mission to take on when
representing Lehigh’s institution. Perspective students are constantly asking
about sustainability efforts on campus and Barr notes that this issue “could
affect our rankings and the type of students we bring in.” Aside from last
week’s activities sustainability on campus can be achieved everyday as
explained by Katie Klaniecki, the program coordinator of sustainability at
Lehigh. “Walking to class and taking alternative transportation to your work
day” is one of the small things we can do as students to minimize excess fossil
fuels and waste. Although the earth week festivities were a huge success this
year, Katie notes that they are working on a new plan with the help of the
sustainability workshops to further improve green actions on campus.

I think the first person experience that glass offers is unique. The biggest obstacle is the invasion of privacy it poses to others. It hasn't become socially acceptable yet. It's kind of silly because people carry their phones around with them everywhere. Glass is essentially a heads-up display version of a smartphone. It could save us all from bending over and constantly checking our phones. Instead of an extension of our hands, it can just become part of our being – which I think can scare people. But I think it we're going to use our technology so much, it should be as elegant and less invasive.

The hands-free component of it is also a huge benefit. It makes me think of a lot of the content in the news today – lots of reporting on protests and controversial situations. A journalist's goal should be to objectively report on a story. With Glass you could record (or someday even stream) video right from the scene, as if you're watching as a bystander. And without a phone in your hands, it allows for more mobility.

People are still very dependent on their mobile devices so I think Glass needs to open back up its relationship with platforms like Twitter, to be able to tweet a photo right away is important. The technology is a little slow right now to be able to keep up in the world of mobile journalism. I think it'd be really cool to use in a breaking news situation once it's a little less buggy and more compatible with the devices and platforms readers would be consuming its content from.

Glass is cool to help us think in different in perspectives as journalists – but the device itself isn't always necessary to create different content than the norm. Especially since the device is on hiatus, a lot of the things we did with Glass can be done with a smartphone.

I think the important thing we learned is to think of stories from someone else's perspective. Instead of thinking "who can I have wear Glass?" we should be thinking "whose story can I tell?" Sometimes the gadget itself is helping in telling this story, but it still helped us think outside of the box.

I'm not really sure if there is another product on the market right now that has the same potential applications as Glass. But I think it's a trendsetter. There are items like Oculus Rift which take the idea of Glass a step further. It puts the consumer right into the story, right before their eyes. Glass is able to make this more accessible – aka you can just watch a first person YouTube video as opposed to procuring Oculus Rift. Stories like these can be told with normal cameras, it's just about thinking differently.